Veteran table tennis player Mouma Das has laid the foundation in the women’s category

It was 1997 when Mouma Das made her first World Table Tennis Championship appearance at Manchester. Twenty four years later, she is still in the mix as Mouma continues to be an inspiration for female paddlers in the country. She has won many medals in that period in both singles and doubles category. At a time when paddlers struggled to get the spotlight, she has single handedly kept the Indian flag flying high.

Her 17 appearances in the World Table Tennis Championship is an achievement in its own way. With over 400 international matches for India, Mouma has repeatedly brought multiple honours to the country. In 2013, she was awarded the Arjuna Award, India’s second highest sporting honour. Then in 2021, she was conferred with India’s fourth highest civilian award – the Padma Shri.

Mouma is a skillful player, who is good at moving the ball quickly and has a solid return. With her good movements across the table, she can make it difficult for opponents to settle down. Showing good potential from a young age, Mouma got her maiden International Gold in 2nd Children of Asia International Sports Games 2000 in Yakutsk.

Spotlight moment

Her first major international moment came in the 2006 Commonwealth Games as she won the Bronze medal in the women’s team category. It was after this she started to gain popularity in the country. As far as Olympics is concerned, she has represented India twice in the Summer Games. The first was in 2004 Athens and after a 12-year hiatus, she qualified again for Rio 2016.

In the recent years, Mouma found a lot of success pairing alongside a talented young paddler Manika Batra. At the 2017 World Table Tennis Championships, the duo reached the quarterfinals in the women’s doubles event, becoming the first Indian pair to achieve this feat.

In the 2017 ITTF Challenge Spanish Open, Manika-Mouma impressively reached the final before losing to the top-seed Korean duo of Jihee Jeon and Haeun Yang in a high-octane women’s doubles final. Notably, in the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Das-Batra settled for the Silver in the women’s doubles final. But, they were part of the women’s team that clinched the Gold in the same competition.

Mouma became a mother in 2019, but that has not stopped her dream of staging a comeback into the sport. She has led the line splendidly for years and has been nothing but an inspiration for aspiring young female paddlers. Her achievements are more than the medals she won as Mouma will always be regarded highly in the Indian table tennis circuit.